Humans getting stupider!

Posted by Joshua S. Hill

August 17, 2007

<— Currently Listening too —> Dave Matthews Band - Big Eyed Fish

Apparently a recent study by scientists apparently with some free time on their hands has investigated the fact that movies are making people dumber. Apparently, the two scientists from the University of Central Florida are saying that the continual attempt by Hollywood to pass off scientific impossibilities as reality is making for a populus who cannot tell reality from fiction.

If you ask me, people are just stupid!

The article, reported on over at Arstechnica, provides some descriptions of what the article is focusing on;

Gravity takes a vacation in Speed: There’s a gap in a freeway bridge with a relatively flat surface. A bus, traveling about 70 mph, crosses that gap, flying along an apparently horizontal path. Gravity was apparently taking a well-deserved break.
Spider-Man’s military genius fails vector math: The Green Goblin cut the cables on the Roosevelt Island Tram but held the loose end to keep it from plunging into the East River. Although he was well positioned to handle the vertical component of the force, the horizontal portion of the pull from the tram car would have wrenched him sideways and into the river.
The X-Men make a last food stand: rough estimate of the calories Magneto had to consume to fuel the magnetic fields that moved the Golden Gate Bridge? 4.8 million, the equivalent to burning of 1,350 pounds of fat. Dieters, take note.

Well, yeah… surely we can’t actually be sitting in the theatre and wondering how it is that Spider-man managed not to be torn to shreds when the line snapped. Or, are we?

Apparently yes, because, despite my original point, scientists are normally not working for the sake of it, and their basis that people are getting stupider is most likely right on the money. Granted, Hollywood probably isn’t helping much, but in reality, blame it on the humans! That they are willing to accept such things is more proof of their gullibility rather than their scientific know-how.

But maybe it’s the combination of both that is eventually going to send us spiralling in to an era of the dumb ruling the dumb. I remember hearing about a movie where this idiot from our time time-travelled to the future where he became - relatively - a genius! I can see it happening, with smart people being a dying race.

Thankfully I’m one of the last… or at least, I’m in the line of the last smart people…

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